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Today's news, hardly covered at all on CNN and other popular television news channels, is that the U.S. government is asking internet companies to retain records of ordinary Americans' web-surfing activity for law enforcement use. See Saul Hansell & Eric Lichtblau, U.S. Wants Internet Companies to Keep Web-Surfing Records, New York Times, June 2, 2006, at A17.

Privacy and individual rights seem to have gone down the drain, starting with the original enactment of the so-called Patriot Act and extending through the myriad measures that the Bush Administration has taken to enhance executive power and tie military and domestic spying activities together. We have learned that the NSA has been gathering phone records without following the law that was enacted to stop abuses that occurred during the Nixon administration. We know that the Defense Department is still gathering data for its massive database on ordinary citizens, and we know that the Administration has utilized its powers under the disastrous Patriot Act to gather library records. Now Justice's Gonzales is proposing that Americans should give up their freedom to surf the Web without government intrusion, in order to possibly aid law enforcement against child pornographers.

Let's face it. Law enforcement would love to have a rule that every citizen has to wear a collar that relays exact location and activities 24/7. That would certainly cut down on crime and would help police eliminate sex trafficing, child pornography, robberies and murders. But we have always drawn a line that protects people from that kind of Stalinesque government intervention in our daily lives. We would be utterly foolish to let a terrorist incident like 9/11 be used to strip us of our ability to explore ideas over the internet without being traced by some government snoop. This proposal is a bad idea. It represents the worst of the Bush Administration's propensity to put purported efforts to make us more secure above every precious individual liberty. Congress should not go along with the proposal, and let us hope that the Supreme Court will have the gumption to stand up for individual liberties if the Justice Department decides to go ahead without enabling legislation.

This is to advise that there will be no postings to the VoBA weblog until May 17, due to Linda Beale's journey to Portugal to teach a short course in U.S. taxation for the Anglo-American Law Program at the Universidad Catolica in Lisbon. Please keep up with A Taxing Matter at http://www.ataxingmatter.us, where Neil Buchanan, a professor at Rutgers Law, will be posting during Ms. Beale's absence.

Eric Schmitt and Edward Wong reported on an internal staff report by Iraq Embassy and military personnel that "provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq'sa political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces as 'serious' and one 'critical'. The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials." The report includes warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions in many areas, "even those generally described as nonviolent by American officials." It warns of the "growing power" of Iranian-backed Shiite parties and rival militias, noting that the U.S. helped put some of those groups in power. It concludes with a quote from an Iraqi police commander in Babil, who says that the police will not intervene between warring militias, if it should come to that, because "They would be too frightened to get into the middle." The commander adds that if American troops leave Babil, "the next day would be civil war." Dated January 31, 2006, the report was put together over a period of 6 weeks, before the bombing of a Shiite shrine that inaugurated an even more intense sectarian strife in Iraq.

The Administration, of course, has been on another of its public relations campaigns to talk optimistically about the Iraqi mess. Cheney, appearing recently on Face the Nation, suggested that the Administration's views more accurately reflect the real conditions in Iraq than the media's coverage of the sectarian violence. This is one more example of the Bush Administration's tendency to paint rosy pictures of their policies' effects--from tax to anti-civil liberties to Katrina aid to the safety of America's ports (see this Washington Post story) to the Iraq war--when in reality they have direct access to information that paints a substantially more somber picture of the same situations. The Administration tends to select out of its data that which best supports the argument it wants to make and keep secret or denigrate all other information. (Its arrangements with the national archives to reclassify unclassified materials is an example of its attempt to use secrecy and control of information to squelch discussion. See "Archives Kept a Secrecy Secret" in the April 12, 2006 Washington Post) That approach is dangerously misleading for the American public and hazardous for the development of reasonable and workable policies.

If it worries you to see the mess the incompetent handling of the Iraq invasion and occupation has created and the FEMA bungling of aid to Katrina victims in New Orleans and elsewhere, you may be about as undelighted as I am to hear that the U.S. Department of Education thinks that it can provide better information to colleges about what they should do to educate America's youth than they can provide for themselves. The story by Jodi Cohen looks at the 19-member commission appointed by Bush to suggest ways to revamp higher education. Quess what! In an administration that can't hold any Justice Department official or military officer of significant rank responsible for widespread abuse of prisoners throughout the military system, there is talk about holding Universities more accountable for the education they provide students. How? standardized tests, national databases, and a national organization to evaluate and sanction higher education institutions! (One has to wonder if the prime rationale is to provide more information Negroponte's project to track all personal information about each and every American citizen--it starts to look like the Minority Report Cruise film about punishing people before they commit crimes, which in fact we have done for thousands of people detained in our so-called "war" on terrorism and preemptive wars on Iraq and Afghanistan).

Generally, it isn't tests and sanctioning organizations with their check lists and "ranking" systems that higher education needs. We already have too much of that from the effect of the ridiculous U.S. News and World Reports ranking system, that has generated a flurry of predictable attention by administrators across the country to the particular numbers that count the most and the gaming of the numbers that any smart person can come up with. What we need is to put our money where our mouth is. We should make college accessible to every young person in the country with the gumption to go. We should fund college for youth with direct student loan programs that don't let financial institutions basically take a cut for doing nothing (because university administrators do all the administering of student loans "funded" by private institutions). We should double the nationally funded grants in the humanities, the arts, and the sciences, to provide more fundamental research to push the country into the next century with the advances we will need to survive the energy and pollution crunch caused by the mega-appetites of the United States and China. We should quit trying to privatize and corporatize university education, because that will result in biased applied research that doesn't spend enough time on the fundamentals. We should quit thinking that the ranking game has much to say about educational excellence. Any school can buy the best students and the most published faculty. The question is whether any school can educate the worst students and use the talents of the many not-quite-recognized-as-superstar faculty.

Michael Janofsky writes about the Bush proposal to open another tract of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling (which, of course, will be supported by the archaic oil depletion allowance that lets wealthy oil companies like Exxon-Mobil write off huge chunks of their income without being subject to taxation---see the recent posting on this subject, titled "Environmentally Friendly Taxes?", at A Taxing Matter). The proposed tract is two million acres just 100 miles off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Some Republicans in the Senate want an even wider drilling zone, while many oppose any drilling at all in this sensitve area.

Note that this does not look like answering the challenge Bush gave himself in the State of the Union to remove our dependence on oil! Instead, it suggests that we will continue subsidizing and supporting oil exploration (exploitation) until the last drop is gone, hoping that we somehow come up with a substitute in the meantime. The environmental degradation--and even the problem of eliminating a resource that may prove to be essential as a base for future scientific developments--is hardly paid attention to. Gale Norton--former Interior Secretary who seemed to see her role as ensuring there remained no pristine wilderness area unscathed by big business--is attributed as suggesting that "drilling in the offshore zone would lead to further development in parts of the Outer Continental Shelf that have been offlimits since the 1980s under a federal moratorium that Congress has [until now, at least] renewed every year." Republican Congressperson Richard Pombo, chair of the natural resources committee in the House and a pro-business, pro-development idol of the oil and gas industry, will introduce a bill in June to allow states to control energy exploration within 125 miles of their shores--taking it away from the federal government and therefore making our oceans even more vulnerable to the power of Big Oil.

A letter to the editor from Linda Beale supporting Feingold's censure motion appeared in the Champaign News-Gazette on April 18, 2006. The letter notes the "mockery of American law" represented by taxpayer-funded partisan propaganda, refusal to comply with international laws respecting the human rights of prisoners, and violation of laws against domestic spying that were enacted specifically to prevent presidential overreaching. It concludes with praise for the Senator as a "courageous patriot."

In a prior posting, I discussed Halliburton contracts and the perennial problem of overcharges and government waivers granted. In that light, readers may be interested in Halliburton's posting about a new contract awarded by the federal government. See this link. Halliburton will be building facilities that may be used for "immigration emergencies" or other emergency detention needs. Is anyone as worried as I am that those detention facilities 1) may be used for more detainees who will receive no due process and 2) will be built with cost overruns that make the contract particularly lucrative to Halliburton?

Several retired generals have spoken out recently to criticize Donald Rumsfeld and his leadership of the military. See, for example, Rumsfeld Rebuked by Retired Generals, More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation. As E.J. Dionne Jr. noted in today's Washington Post, it is reasonable for such generals to demand Rumsfeld retire. They have seen the contempt this Administration has shown to those who question the "war of choice/war on the cheap" approach of this administration.

The problem, regretably, does not end with Rumsfeld. Cheney, an advocate of war against Iraq early on, was also the most vocal in claiming that the war would be short and sweet because we would be treated as liberating heroes. He was also the one most willing to continue repeating the discredited connections between Iraq and 9/11 and more generally between Iraq and al-Queda. Bush, of course, has stood behind both Cheney and Rumsfeld, and still insists that Rumsfeld has done a "heckuva" job. Admitting Rumsfeld's military failures in Iraq would be tantamount to admitting his own huge error in choosing to unseat Saddam without any plan in place for Saddam's replacement.

Meanwhile, conservatives news outlets continue to associate any criticism of Bush's war of choice in Iraq with yielding in our struggle against terrorism.

This isn't about one secretary of defense or six generals who don't like his policies. This is about winning the most dangerous and important war America has ever fought. By going public with their criticisms in the midst of the war, those generals are making victory more difficult. They are encouraging the enemy to fight on, believing we will ultimately surrender. There can be no good that will come from the comments of the former leaders of our volunteer soldiers, at least no good for what they once called "our side." Thomas, Retired Summer Soldiers, Salt Lake Tribune, Arp. 18, 2006.

Conflating the war in Iraq with the struggle against terrorism is dangerous. It led us into the ill-fated war in the first place, and it can deceive us about the effectiveness of our actions to counter terrorism now. Treating dissent from foolish warmongering policies as "encouraging the enemy" is equally foolhardy. Stubborn adherence to bad policy neither defeats terrorists nor resolves the insurgency in Iraq. When policies are failing, dissent and new thinking are needed. When military experts who have soldiered on under harmful policies (such as the current Administration's disdainful attitude towards the Geneva Conventions that has permitted prisoners to be tortured and its equally disdainful attitude towards American troops that has permitted our soldiers to go into the field with inadequate or non-existent armor) speak up, we should pay careful attention to what they say.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, Mr. Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true. See this article in the Washington Post

As the DeLay, Abramoff, and Libbey (Cheney/Bush) scandals are more exposed each day, it may be worth going back a few months to a relevation late last year about one of the big "grassroots" lobbying organizations that support DeLay priorities. This article from the Washington Post pointed out the lack of grassroots in the U.S. Family Network, which was funded almost entirely through its connections with Jack Abramoff.

[T]he steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff's long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known...

The records, other documents and interviews call into question the very purpose of the U.S. Family Network, which functioned mostly by collecting funds from domestic and foreign businesses whose interests coincided with DeLay's activities while he was serving as House majority whip from 1995 to 2002, and as majority leader from 2002 until the end of September.

Now that Abramoff's corrupt enterprise has been exposed and DeLay is resigning from the House, can we expect these kinds of activities to stop? This Congress has not even been able to investigate a president who admits disobeying the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act designed to reign in out-of-control executive power. It appears that the administration may be conducting purely domestic surveillance, based on Gonzalez' most recent attempts to justify the legality of such surveillance if it were to be conducted. I suspect it will take a real House cleaning that replaces the current group with people who will take their responsibilities in the check-and-balance system more seriously.

USA Today ran a story about the New Hampshire Republican scheme to jam the phones to keep the New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002. Here's an excerpt from the story.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002--as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down. The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was 'preposterous' to suggest the calls involved phone jamming. The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing.... The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case. ... Virtually al lthe calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman.

What this story suggests is just one more tawdry detail in the Republican Party's willingness to trade integrity for power, competence for chronyism, and sound governmental policies for corporate welfare. Why is it that these factually proven cases of corruption are not being talked about on the television and radio news channels day after day? The media spend hours talking about sensational crimes, but not about these sensational political crimes that so direly threaten democracy across the country. The potential involvement of White House personnel in election dirty tricks out to be explored. Why aren't reporters asking about this story at White House press conferences?

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article, here, on Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's popular leader who has used the clout of oil reserves to force multinational corporations to pay more reasonable royalty amounts and to help out neighboring latino countries, like Cuba, that are short-shafted by U.S. policies. The article notes that U.S. Secretary of State Rice has continued her calls for condemnation of Venezuela in spite of Chavez's being a democratically elected leader of a country that is making some strides to overcome the history of money politics that has long sustained a powerful elite.

The LA Times notes that Rice's call for a "united front" against Venezuela has been fruitless:

Washington has been spitting into the wind. Venezuela's influence in the hemisphere has continued to rise while the U.S. has succeeded only in isolating itself more than at any time in at least half a century. It might be worth asking why.

The article notes that Venezuela, in spite of a number of weaknesses, is a stable democracy. The media, mostly owned by the elite class, continues to berate Chavez at every turn. Venezuela's elections have been certified by a number of organizations as having been conducted fairly and transparently. The United States' antagonism seems more against the social views of Chavez than in support of some ideal of democracy.

U.S. government documents released under our Freedom of Information Act indicate that Washington not only supported but was involved in the military coup that temporarily overthrew Venezuela's elected government in April 2002. Here in Washington, there is a "Monty Python" attitude toward the coup: "Let's not argue about who killed who." But in Latin America, a military coup against a democratically elected government is still considered a serious crime.

If you'd like more information about the coup by Venezuelan elites intent on undermining the democratically elected presidency of Chavez and the United States' involvement in it, watch "Esta Revolucion No Se Televisar." Filmed by a U.S. film crew that happened to be in Caracas when the coup took place, it is a revealing documentary of the insurgency and its demise. It puts neither the elites of Venezuela nor the United States in a good light. Perhaps Bush should start paying more attention to the substance of the words he mouths so easily about freedom and democracy, before he tries to damage the credibility of Venezuela's duly elected president.